Merill Fernando

Principal Product Manager @ Microsoft • Azure AD • Identity CxP

Use a custom app for Graph PowerShell delegate access

1 minute read

If you want to follow the least privilege model for the applications in your Azure AD tenant, you might be concerned about consenting to many permissions scopes to the Microsoft Graph PowerShell app over time.

To avoid this, you can register your own app for use with Microsoft Graph PowerShell. This allows you to have more granular control.

Here are the steps to go about setting it up.

  • Browse to Entra > App registrations [adappreg.cmd.ms] > New Registration
    • Name: Microsoft Graph PowerShell - High Privilege admin use only (<- Give a meaningful name)
    • Account type: Accounts in this organization directory
    • Redirect URI:
      • Select Public client/native from the drop down
      • Uri: http://localhost
    • Click Create

That’s it!

Now you can use this app instead of the default one by connecting with

Connect-MgGraph -ClientId <Your new app clientid> -TenantId <your tenant id>

Here are a few screenshots to help guide you.

Screenshot showing how the app should be created

Remember to use the ClientId and TenantId parameters when signing in.

Screenshot signing in with the new app in PowerShell

Restricted user access

I would also recommend limiting the users that have access to these Graph PowerShell applications. To do this browse to the Enterprise Applications [adapps.cmd.ms](https://adapps.cmd.ms] blade, select the app and in Properties set Assignment required? to Yes. Then grant access to the required folks from the Users blade.

Windows PowerShell 5.1

The steps above will get you working with PowerShell 7, which is what you SHOULD be using. In the unfortunate event that you are stuck with Windows PowerShell 5.1 you need to do one more thing.

  • Open the app you just created in App registrations [adappreg.cmd.ms]
  • Select Authentication
    • Check https://login.microsoftonline.com/common/oauth2/nativeclient
    • Click Save

Azure AD and Microsoft Graph Extensions and Attributes

2 minute read

A comparison of the five different types of Microsoft Azure AD + Graph extensions and attributes.

  Extension Attributes 1-15 (aka onPremisesExtensionAttributes) Directory extensions / Custom extension properties (aka AAD extensions) Schema extensions Open extensions Custom security attributes
Audience IT Admins • Devs IT Admins • Devs Devs Devs IT Admins • Devs
Dynamic group membership rule ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Conditional Access - Users and groups ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Conditional Access - App Filter ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Conditional Access - Device Filter ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌
Admin user interface ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Cross-Tenant synchronization ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
App user provisioning ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Entitlement Management automatic assignment ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Lifecycle Workflows execution conditions scope ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Filterable ✅ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅
External identities - Self-service sign up flow ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Usable for customizing token claims ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Requires AAD P1/P2 license ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Azure ABAC ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Block read access ❌ ❌ ❌ ❌ ✅
Strongly typed ❌ ✅ ✅ ❌ ✅
Support multi-valued attributes ✅ ✅1 ❌ ❌ ✅
Azure AD Connect and Cloud Sync ✅ ✅ ❌ ❌ ❌
Supported resources user • device user • group • administrativeUnit • application • device • organization user • group • administrativeUnit • application • contact • device • event • message • organization • post user • group • contact • device • event • message • organization • post • todoTask • todoTaskList user • servicePrincipal
Data types String Binary • Boolean • DateTime • Integer • LargeInteger • String (256 char) Binary • Boolean • DateTime • Integer • String String Boolean • Integer • String
Max limits 15 per object 100 extensions across all types and all applications 100 per resource 2 per creator app per resource 50 per object • 500 attributes per tenant • More info
When to use • Simpler way to leverage on-prem data or Exchange data
• Wanting a simple string attribute on a user/device which can be used in multiple applications as a claim		 • Extending AAD resources with more attributes
• Need more strongly-typed attributes than extension attributes 1-15
• With AAD Connect Sync, can also sync on-prem or SharePoint data		 • To extend Graph resources
• Don’t require attributes as part of user authentication and as a claim		 Directly add attributes to single Graph object, rather than through an extension schema Store confidential data
Key notes • Can only sync for users with onPremisesSyncEnabled
• Cannot be updated by Microsoft Graph unless users/devices are cloud only (not synced from on-prem)		 • Extension is created on an app object, then target resource(s) are manually updated with value
• AAD Connect Sync uses directory extensions		 Extension is created as stand-alone resource, then applied to object Simple setup and usage Built with security and least privilege

1 Multi-value support in directory extensions is limited to attributes synchronized from on-prem. It is not possible to create new multi-valued directory extensions in Azure AD.

Azure AD Shortcuts

1 minute read

NOTE: Check out https://cmd.ms. The new and improved version of this.

I’m a command line guy and hate having to click to get to various Azure AD pages. Over time I created these shortcuts and thought you might find them helpful.

Here is how it works. Open a new tab and type aka.ms/ad/{command}

Where shortcut is one of the commands below.

aka.ms Command Portal Blade
aka.ms/ad/ca ca Conditional Access
aka.ms/ad/pim pim Privileged Identity Management
aka.ms/ad/users users Users
aka.ms/ad/groups groups Groups
aka.ms/ad/devices devices Devices
aka.ms/ad/apps apps Enterprise Applications
aka.ms/ad/appreg appreg Application Registrations
aka.ms/ad/auth auth Authentication Methods Policies
aka.ms/ad/legacymfa legacymfa Legacy MFA
aka.ms/ad/guests guests Guest Access Settings
aka.ms/ad/logs logs Sign in Logs
aka.ms/ad/xtap xtap Cross Tenant Access Settings
aka.ms/ad/roles roles Azure AD Roles
aka.ms/ad/sspr sspr Password Reset
aka.ms/ad/security security Security
aka.ms/ad/mfaunblock mfaunblock MFA Unblock
aka.ms/ad/reviews reviews Access Reviews
aka.ms/ad/score score Secure Score
aka.ms/ad/license license Licenses
aka.ms/ad/synclog synclog AAD Connect Sync Errors
aka.ms/ad/adfslog adfslog ADFS Log
aka.ms/ad/consent consent Consents and Permissions
aka.ms/ad/support support Support
aka.ms/ad/list list List all these shortcuts

If you liked those here are some of my favourite Identity related shortcuts.

aka.ms Page
aka.ms/azad Azure AD Portal
aka.ms/sspr Self Service Password Reset
aka.ms/mysecurity My Security
aka.ms/myapps My Apps
aka.ms/my-account My Account
aka.ms/my-groups My Groups
aka.ms/my-access My Access Packages
aka.ms/mystaff My Access Packages
aka.ms/mfasetup Alternative for My Security
aka.ms/ge Graph Explorer
aka.ms/ge Intune

Have I missed anything? Have new suggestions? Let me know at twitter.com/merill.

Graph PowerShell Conversion Analyzer

1 minute read

Screenshot of Graph PowerShell Analyzer

Hey folks, I took part in a hackathon last week and built the Graph PowerShell Conversion Analyzer. Hopefully, this will help a bit as you upgrade your AzureAD & MSOnline PowerShell scripts to Graph PowerShell.

It’s very rough right now but I would love to hear your feedback.

Try it out at https://graphpowershell.merill.net

You start by pasting in one of your old scripts that you want to upgrade to Graph PowerShell and clicking the Analyze button.

This will generate a report of all the Azure AD PowerShell and MSOnline commands that were found along with a mapping to its corresponding Graph PowerShell command. The sample generated will try to map the parameters to the new command.

This is where I still need to do a lot more work to make it really useful.

Screenshot of Analysis Report

Where possible you also get direct links to both the Graph PowerShell command reference as well as the Graph API reference (which usually has more relevant info).

No more hunting around and searching the docs!

Screenshot showing links to the docs

The last bit is where you the community can really help us and each other out. We’ve started an open repository of sample Graph PowerShell scripts at https://aka.ms/graphsamples

We would love to make this the largest collection of Graph PowerShell sample scripts. It’s open to everyone to contribute so please share your scripts (even one-liners).

Screenshot of the Graph samples community

Let me know what you think. If you have any ideas on how this can be improved I’m all ears!

Get-MgUser_List1: Expect simple name=value query, but observe property 'assignedLicenses' of complex type 'AssignedLicense'.

less than 1 minute read

Are you seeing this message when trying to get user license information using the Graph API.

_Expect simple name=value query, but observe property ‘assignedLicenses’ of complex type ‘AssignedLicense’.

    ❯ Get-MgUser -Filter 'assignedLicenses/$count eq 0'
    Get-MgUser_List1: Expect simple name=value query, but observe property 'assignedLicenses' of complex type 'AssignedLicense'.

The fix is quite simple. Set the ConsistencyLevel header to eventual and pass in a variable to store the count of the result set and you are good to go.

    ❯ Get-MgUser -Filter 'assignedLicenses/$count eq 0' -ConsistencyLevel eventual -CountVariable licensedUserCount -All
    
    Id                                   DisplayName     Mail                           UserPrincipalName
    --                                   -----------     ----                           -----------------
    1468b68b-8536-4bc5-ab1f-6014175b836d merill-fdo      merill-fdo@yopmail.net         merill-fdo_yopmail.net#E…
    160f8064-a20c-4236-bdf4-3393003e916b Ezra Brand      ezra@fdo.net                   ezra_fdo.net#EXT#@pora.n…
    37e5a3d1-f92b-4a12-bb35-91bf80969810 Joshua Sal      user2@fakedomain.com           user2_fakedomain.com#EXT…
    5c8537e4-7d7f-4920-a921-382d91fa53fd Fake Damain     user@fakedomain.com            user_fakedomain.com#EXT#…
    640885de-9652-4fb2-8a87-963cc2f599a0 Chris Green     chris.green@yopmail.net        chris.green_yopmail.net#…